Saturday, July 22, 2017

In trying to keep my promise to myself and also to you all, I am doing my best to catch up on posting about some of the things that I have been working on that I haven’t yet shared. Yesterday was a good day, as we finished getting the site updated and all the new patterns and products are now available.

For those of you who liked the new SLDPK164 Autumn Leaf Beveled Ornaments,

I was really thrilled with the response that I had in showing them the other day, and I hope to see many other designs on them. I will be designing my own painting patterns using them as well in the near future. I have some online classes to design for and I also want to get some autumn designs out there as soon as I can. Before we know it, summer will be over and everyone will be looking to create autumn and holiday projects. Sometimes I feel there just aren’t enough hours in the day.

The wood kits come with basic painting instructions so that you can see the process I used to get the beautiful metallic finish on them using DecoArt’s Extreme Sheen Metallic paint. The Extreme Sheen Metallics are a new line of paint, and they have much more pigment than their regular metallic paints. I really do love them. I hope to see others use these pieces with their own fall and Halloween patterns. It will be fun to see what others do with them.

The other thing that I really wanted to post here was that I DID finish my “Five Little Sheep” embroidery exercise.

I call this an “exercise” because to me it was kind of like a ‘warm up’ before I jumped into designing my first kit. With completing my “A Perfect World” embroidery kit from Di van Neikirk, it had used over 60 different stitches and techniques, I believe. I embroidered the sheep to kind of brush up on the basics and decide which direction I wanted to head with my first needlework kit. Besides that – it was fun to see how differently I could make the same simple pattern.

During the past couple of weeks, I did complete all five sheep. I believe I showed the first three and was in the middle of the fourth when I dropped off blogging. In any case, I will show them all here today . . .

Sheep 1 was created using beautiful thread from Valdani. This one was done with a variegated #12 Perle Cotton and consists of loads of “Bullion Knots”:

The second sheep was created again with Valdani thread, but this time a #12 solid Perle Cotton. I used glass pearl beads surrounded by Bullion Knots to make this wool pattern:

Sheep #3 was created using all glass pearl beads and a glass cabochon in the center. I wanted to try encasing the large glass cabochon using the smaller seed beads. The surrounding pearl glass beads were various sizes and shades of white to make an interesting, glamorous piece:

Sheep #4 was half done when I left off. I decided to use 1/8" silk ribbon and fill the 'wool’ in with a ribbon stitch. He is so fluffy and fun!

And finally, sheep #5 was done in a cut turkey work stitch. First, though, I hand-dyed some pure wool yarn using Jacquard textile dye.

It gave me a chance to try a product that I had from Jacquard called "Airfix" which is a liquid that is added to the dye to instantly set it without having to iron or use heat. I used their Black dye and figured that would tell the tale of how this product worked the best, as anyone who has dyed fabric knows how much it bleeds out typically. I must report that I was highly impressed with this product, as after the initial rinse, there was absolutely NO bleeding of the black into either a fresh bath of water or even on a white paper towel. This is significant for me because I intend to dye some of my own silk ribbon for use in my kits and I want to be sure that the ribbon I dye will be completely colorfast. I was really happy!

And here they all are in a group…

I don’t know what I am going to do with them yet. I may make them into pins or use them as stumpwork pieces to add onto a larger piece. For now, they are happy as they are and I will hang on them until I am ready to use them. They served their purpose well.

I look forward to seeing how this part of my business develops. As with anything new, we never know. But I am from the school of thought that believes “nothing ventured, nothing gained” and I feel the need to give it a try. There is always room for more creativity, isn’t there?

So that is where I am today. I have orders to cut this weekend and I am going to be working on some new designs. Keith and I are planning some big changes on our website so that those of you who like a particular part of our business can stay focused on that area. We are going to be dividing everything up and possibly go to two separate websites – one for the woodworking aspect and the other for the painting part. It is a huge step for us but we believe it will make things better for all of us. We hope you agree. I will talk more about that as we get things settled.

I wish you all a wonderful weekend. It is a beautiful, sunny and warm day here in Nova Scotia. Not hot at all. I couldn’t ask for better.